


Into the Blue

by Apricot



Category: Arrival (2016)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Coda, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Non-Explicit Sex, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-31 01:17:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8557042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apricot/pseuds/Apricot
Summary: There is an Ian who will always hate her for what she’d done to him. There’s an Ian who always will love her. The fact that both of these Ians will exist in the same time and space, forever, feels right.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the movie.

The dream’s just that. A dream.

It could be a fragment of a memory, from before—back when they were happy. Maybe even before Hannah had been born, because she couldn’t sense her in the memory.

They’re walking together on the shore, and the sky is gray and heavy. The wind’s picked up, and everything around them is cold, but she can remember that she’s grateful for Ian’s warmth beside her. She can feel his comforting presence, and the burning connection of his naked fingers wrapped around her own. It feels like the only part of her that isn’t cold.

The problem, though, is that she just can’t place this time in any of her memories. Months after she’d finished her book, she’d stopped visiting the non-linear space and began to move forward through time once more. But then... it was like how sometimes she could wake up and find herself thinking in Farsi, or speaking and not realizing she’d replaced a phrase she’d known as a child with one that she’d only learned ten years ago until she caught the blank stares of the people around her.

But this memory is so real-- the wind on her face, the feeling of his fingers in hers, the cold water on her feet-- that she almost picks up the phone to call Ian to confirm that it’s in the past, that it’s behind them, and there's no hope of a moment where she feels safe with him again, safe in his arms, and that things will be all right.

She doesn’t call. He hasn’t spoken to her since Hannah’s funeral; hasn't looked her in the face since they buried their child together. He couldn’t even meet her eyes then, and there’s no need for a translation for what that means. There is an Ian who will always hate her for what she’d done. There’s an Ian who always will love her. The fact that both of these Ians exist in the same time and space, forever, feels right.

Fragments of the memory come and go, all week, taunting and comforting her by turns. But one night, she dreams of the phone in her hand and his voice in her ear and so the next morning she finally swallows her pride and calls.

“Hello?”

"Hi."

He already knows who it is. She crosses her legs in the seat, biting her lip as she leans forward, cataloging the soft exhales on the other end of the phone that's miles away. She counts her own heartbeats.

“Is there something you need, Louise?” Ian asks. His voice sounds rougher, tired, and it may be because he’s older or because of a lack of sleep or because it's her calling him. She imagines he could be working through the night again, alone, bent over a stack of papers, his glasses sliding slightly down the bridge of his nose, lost in calculations.

Or not alone. He could be with someone. She pushes that thought away.

“Are you okay?” She's tentative, because although it’s a normal kind of question she isn’t sure of her current right to ask.

He pauses for a moment on the other end of the line, and his voice is still rough, but something along the edges softens. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

There’s another long moment of silence between them. 

"Are you...working?" she tries.

He pauses. "Right now? Yeah. Are...you?"  
  
"No."

It's an awkward silence, and Louise closes her eyes, imagining the silence filled with shadows and ghosts and echoes of things they might have told each other once. Promises whispered against skin in the dark. Vows made in bright sunlight.

She breaks it again.

“I...when we went to the beach, did we ever walk by the water?” Now her own voice sounds rough and tired. “Not with...not with Hannah. Just us.”

“You called to ask me if we ever went to the beach?” This time the edge in his voice isn’t soft at all.

There’s really no good response to that, because of course it sounds inane, sounds like she’s making up excuses. Maybe she is. She presses her fingers against the bridge of her nose, between her eyes and resists the urge to swipe her thumb against the inside of her ring finger, where the wedding band used to sit. “Do you remember that?”

“I remember taking Hannah.”

Their daughter’s name is like a wound in his throat. And because she knows him, she can see as well as hear the way he swallows at the end of the word, burying back old pain. Hannah at the shore. Hannah playing in the surf. A yellow kite, trailing in the wet sand, Hannah running ahead of her two parents. Ian’s arm around Louise’s waist, his breath in her ear. She closes her eyes tightly.

“I don’t think it was with Hannah,” she says. "We were walking on the beach and...and you were carrying my shoes, remember that?"

Ian takes a sharp breath that sounds like impatience. “No. I don’t remember it.”

That doesn’t mean anything, she knows. She can’t remember everything, after all, and there could have been a time. That was the problem with memories. They often came back in pieces, and they could lie. She could have gone with him to the shore a hundred times, experienced that moment a dozen times over and this- _the moment, her feet in the sand and her hand in his hand-_  was simply a distillation of those long-term memories.

“Okay,” she says, softly. He exhales, and in her mind she can feel Ian’s arms around her, smell soap and sweat and salt against his hairline, and for a moment she misses him so much every corner of her body aches.

His voice is broken and bitter in her ear. “Good night, Louise.”

The feeling’s gone, and she’s alone, only the sweater wrapped around her.

“Goodnight,” she says. She lets the dial tone ring in her ear for a few minutes before she finally hangs up.

 

* * *

 

Ian’s body stretches over hers, the only sound the whisper of the sheets below them and their quiet, mingled breath. She kisses him, feeling the thrum of his heart against her breast and she can taste salt against his lips. It’s sweat, it’s tears, or maybe it’s salt water because there’s a trace of sand along his skin; she can brush it away with her hands. His large palm slides under her knee, hoisting her higher underneath him with enough urgency that she gasps, and he fills her deeper now. Her fingertips curl against the exquisite tension of his back, the taut muscle.

He whispers into her ear something soft, something formless, but she’s lost it because she’s gripping him tighter; she’s crying out his name, she's holding him so tight because she can't bear to let him go.

(And what he says doesn’t matter anyway.)

 

 

* * *

 

Their daughter is in the backyard when she tells him. Hannah is half-singing a song she’s made up, under her breath, and then louder, testing the volume of her voice. Most of the words are nonsense, but there’s a line she must like, because she keeps finding it again.

_Down, down, into the blue and under the sky where I’ll find you-_

It seems horrible, a punctuation to the agony in her husband’s face. Louise opens her mouth to call out to her, to ask her to stop singing, but she doesn’t want to alert her daughter that something is wrong in the house so she closes it again. Her sing-song melody keeps going.

Ian looks up. The muscles in his face and throat are tight, and for a moment she can see clearly what the lines of his eyes and mouth only hint at. She can see what he’ll look like as an old man.

“You don’t know that,” he says, and his voice wavers a little. “You can’t.”

She doesn’t say anything. She knows that this is only the beginning of his denial, that his grief will be strong and terrible. She doesn’t have to tell him why she could know, why she does know, and that this will not last as long as his anger. The anger will rip apart their marriage, because there’s no way to bargain, no hope that’s not poisoned by denial, and the secret she kept took away any specter of a choice he might have had.

She's been staring off into the distance, and so she makes herself come back, to reach for his hand, but Ian flinches away.

“How could you- how _could_ you-” he says, and the grief is so raw it would sweep her along if her heart wasn’t already lead, anchoring her to her chair. Outside, their daughter is singing the verse again.

_Down, down, into the blue and under the sky where I’ll find you-_

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t see Ian again until the third anniversary of Hannah’s death.

It’s by chance. Every year, she’s gone to a place where they’d been happy together. Every year, she's gone somewhere she holds a memory of Hannah. She’ll try to close her eyes and revisit that moment, to experience it again, but she's found that non-linear time isn't something you can force.

This year (the third year) she goes to the lake. Years ago, before everything, they’d gone camping out here. They’d played on the shore. She wants to recapture some of that memory again. She can hear the laughter of children below the sandy bluff that she’s standing unevenly on, having just come from the college. A few people watch her. She must look out of place here, in a pencil skirt and coat that feels too thin for the lakeside wind.

_Down, down, into the blue and under the sky where I’ll find you-_

A fragment of the song flickers through her mind, and she wraps her arms around herself, closing her eyes, but it’s just a memory.

“Louise.”  
  
Her eyes flick open, and when she looks up, Ian’s standing there. His face is guarded.

“What--“ she says, before he can. She swallows. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“I always come here,” he responds, glancing out at the lake. “Today.”

Of course. She feels slightly ashamed to be intruding, if this is his place, and she tucks her arms around herself tighter, looking at the ground.

“I was thinking about that day,” she says. “With Hannah. And the kite.”

A kite she and her father had put together weeks before, made of glue and string and Popsicle sticks. Hannah had it in her mind she would create her own kite, and no law of physics or suggestion from her father, who’d been relegated to assistant, would help her. She’d dragged the kite through the sand and the water and then turned it into a boat when the thing failed to fly.

The faintest of smiles flickers over Ian's face, and Louise can tell he’s remembering. She stares at the curve of his mouth, feeling suddenly hungry for that expression. She hasn't seen it in years.

It fades, though, and he looks away.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think about that too.”

She’s intruding. He's claimed this place as his own private memorial to his grief, and she's encroaching on that. It's getting colder now. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

_We will walk on the shoreline; the waves will lap at my ankles and sand will sink between my toes. You will carry our shoes in one hand while the other slips into mine._

_We will walk, my hand in yours, as the breeze whips against my face. I will turn and press my mouth to yours, and your kiss is warm and soft and the shape of your mouth so familiar against mine, so like home..._

 “Louise?”

She starts. Ian's staring at her. She manages a faint, strained smile, glancing back at shore, and the children playing far below. His eyes do not follow her sight line, remaining on her, and she finds herself wishing he would leave. She can’t bear the force of his gaze right now when all she can feel is the shadow of his mouth on hers.

The children below are calling to each other, splashing in the waves and shrieking at the cold water. Ian's still watching her.

"Do you want to go for a walk?" he finally asks, quietly.   
  
The words catch her off guard, and she automatically shakes her head.

“Come on. We’ll go down by the water.”

Louise turns her head a little, feeling the wind pick up and stir the tendrils that framed her face. It’s not exactly like she’s dressed for a walk, coming from the campus, and she glances down at her feet, but he’s already anticipated that excuse.

“I’ll take them,” he said, the words a little stilted, like they’re an echo from someone a decade ago. The words sound odd, a little strained. She raises her head. For a long moment she looks at him, and her throat suddenly feels too thick.

_Remember that?_

_No, I don't remember it._

__There's barely enough room to breathe, and Ian's eyes are on hers. She manages a nod.

The sand was-- _was, is, will be --_ cool underneath her feet. He stands by, awkward, his eyes on the ground as she leans down, kicking off the heels. He takes them, pressing his lips together for a moment before he turns.

She follows him down the sandy bluff, toward the blue and gray line of the shore.

 

* * *

 

“ _I love you_ ,” Ian whispers, soft in her ear. 

She holds him tighter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
